Resistance to Change in the Workplace

Foreword by Spenser Johnson: One the surface, the story of this book appears to be a fable that is relatively easy to grasp, but it does subtly impart an invaluable lesson on change. The book covers John Kotter’s Eight Steps to bring about successful organizational change and can be equally useful for a high-school student as it is for a CEO of a multi-national organization.

Resistance to change is an expected reaction of human nature. We are not accustomed to change, as it is possible to lead to failure; however, there are also ways to manage the resistance within the company.

This article discusses the pros and cons of advocating change within the workplace. It also discusses the reason (s) individuals are said to resist change because of habit and inertia, fear of the unknown, absence of the skills they will need after the change, and fear of losing power. OD approaches to organizational change presents a solid consensus that change and resistance can and should be "managed" by developing a strategy for change and using the OD tool kit of interventions such as training and communication programs, confrontation meetings, stakeholder

Change is difficult. Walking with people through change can be challenging and often draining. Bringing change, that persists is even harder. Most people resist even when they see the need for change and believe that it has to occur (p. 52).

Organizational change is a necessary outcome when considering various scenarios contributing to the resulting vision. Perplexing as it may seem, change initiatives don’t always result in positive outcomes. In fact, many never succeed. As a change agent, one should always have formulated a vision of what change will “look” like for the organization. One would be hard pressed to paint a landscape without having a vision of what the landscape should resemble. Yet, resistance to change usually becomes a significant factor contributing to an initiative’s failure. It is likely an

Changes are very critical to enhance organizational effectiveness. An organization needs to implement changes to stay productive, competitive as well as avoiding calamity in the case of aviation sector. Changes are the process of instilling new attitudes, values, norms and behaviors within an organization to support the way of doing work. However, the implementation of changes is a task that requires adequate planning and design since changes are not always welcome and could lead to individual's resistance to change. (Agboola,& Salawu,2011). The identification

Large scale change is not a simple matter, the complexity and many moving parts can be distilled down into a couple models, however pulling off a successful transformation is extremely challenging. Unfortunately, the odds are not good for change. Research by John Kotter revealed that only thirty percent of change programs succeed. The main reasons for the failures are not related to resources or budgets, but behavior and more specifically, employee resistance and management behaviors that do not support the intended changes. These are the two leading causes that result in seventy percent of failures. Kotter first reported on this dismal success rate back in 1995, and quite honestly, there has been little progress at advancing the success of

John Kotter, a leading advocate and educator in change initiatives, expresses two essential characteristics that must be present in any change initiative. First, any change that is considered to be useful and necessary must go through a multi-step process that will transcend obstacles in its way. Second, it is essential that any change initiative must be lead by effective leadership (Kotter, 1996). However, any leader in a change initiate must reconcile the reality that a major component to mankind’s instinctive nature is that people have an inherent need for predictability and order (Hogan, 2007). Leaders must, therefore, consider that initiatives may be experienced in ways that contradict this basic need leading to employee resistance (Bernerth, 2011). Considering such a potential obstacle, Kotter developed an eight-stage change process to guide organizations through initiatives in ways that may retain employee stability and enable employees to maintain a sense of identity and understanding (Huy, 1999).

John Kotter noticed that the way our world is changing is intensifying, but the ability we have to keep pace with this change and adapt to it, as an organization is difficult for us to do. That is why Kotter made an 8-step-process to give organizations the possibility to lead change in today’s world successfully. The first four steps mentioned describes the planning ahead in order to complete the change. Step five and six describes the actual changes in the organization, and, lastly, step seven and eight describes the maintenance of changes in the organization. If an organization follows the advices mentioned in all eight steps, they will ensure that the changes will succeed, according to Kotter.

The above diagram is the 8steps of John Kotter towards change.This model is divided into three phase.The first phase is to create the climate for change.The first step is to create urgency, not all of the employees are open to change,for change to happen the company must develop a sense of urgency around the need for change.An honest and convincing dialouge about what is happening in the marketplace and with the competition may convince people and make them start talking about the change being propose, the urgency can build and feed on itself.To form a powerful coalition, people need to be convince the crucial to change. Bring together a coalition, or team, of influential people whose power comes from a variety of

Individuals when faced with any major change will be inevitably resistant and will want to preserve the status quo, especially if they think their status or security within the organization is in danger (Bolognese, 2010). Folger and Skarlicki believe that organizational change produces skepticism in employees which make it problematic and possibly even impossible to contrive improvements within the organization (as cited in Bolognese, 2010) Therefore, management must understand, accept and make an effort to work with resistance, since it can undermine even the most well-conceived change efforts (Bolognese, 2010). Furthermore, Coetsee states for organizations to achieve the maximum benefits from change they must effectively create and

In this stage Kotter shares business stories of successful companies that increased urgency to spark a change. He explains that there are four behaviors which could prevent change. Behaviors like “complacency, immobilization, self-protection, you-can’t-make-me-move deviance, and pessimistic attitude that leads to constant hesitation.” (Kotter and Cohen, p17) These four negative elements have to be approached carefully because if they are not the employees wouldn’t not have any sense of urgency to perform any changes. To have a successful introduction to change and for it to be received with urgency, it has to be presented in a way that the leaders of an organization will back it up, because they are “part of a larger activity aimed at helping to lower feelings undermining urgency.” (Kotter

People often resist change based on fear of the unknown, fear of loss, fear of failure, disruption of interpersonal

To identify the key elements of the resistanceto change described in this situation, one may make use of the six Change Approaches of Kotter and Schlesinger.[1]The model prevents, minimizes or descreases resistance to change in organizations. According to Kotter and Schlesinger (1979), there are four reasons that why people resist change, three of which are applicable to this case:

“It is easy to change the things that nobody cares about. It becomes difficult when you start to change the things that people do care about, or when they start to care about the things that you are changing.” (Lorenzi) Resistance to change is a continuous problem. At both the employee and organizational ranks. Resistance to change damages concentrated efforts to improve an organization, and can cripple an organizations efficiency. (Lorenzi) Opposition to change may even be logical and justified in some cases. Sometimes, people do not resist change, but they oppose the person representing the change or the mode of executing the change.